


Fragile

by mythopathic



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M, Smut, darkish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-09
Updated: 2012-08-09
Packaged: 2017-11-11 18:47:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/481694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mythopathic/pseuds/mythopathic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Caroline is found kneeling over a dead man. She snapped his neck. [timeline: in the near future post S3]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fragile

**Fragile**

 

 

The vampire hunter lies splayed-limbed face upward eyes closed on the street. He could have been passed out, a drunken man never making it home for the night, but for the vertebrae’s spiny protrusions forming a triangle under his skin on the side of the neck where the jugular is supposed to be. It’s incredible how elastic the human skin can be that you can separate the head from the body and never have to break skin.

 

Caroline kneels to search the body. His wallet is in the jacket pocket. Roger James Barlow is his name, thirty-two years old, from Illinois. Some vampire hunters have their ID’s with them. It’s not a matter of confidence, she suspects, because why would you risk the possibility that the vampire you chase might know your name and where you live. No, it must be hope that somehow your body will make it back to your folk, that your ID card is going to be found by a cop and send you where you belong.

 

From Caroline’s experience there is no vampire hunter who is not on a path of vengeance. Everyone’s lost a loved one, they all want to balance out the odds or the void. Then there are some who keep souvenirs, trophies from past kills, usually fangs but she has sometimes found hackle-rising hair-woven bracelets and other stuff too shriveled to be worth or want of a closer look.

 

She holds her breath while going through all his pockets, unbuttons his shirt to the neck, pats his torso, bares his limp wrists. This guy has nothing like that. It makes it hard to draw breath.

 

“Oh, fuck!”

 

It helps. Roger James Barlow.

 

A pair of feet in tan suede loafers appears in her line of vision and Caroline makes the distinction that it’s her vampire reflexes picking this up. She straightens on her feet fast and cautious while a curly blond head bends and gathers the dead man’s—Roger’s—stake.

 

“Are you stalking me now?” she asks Klaus. He juggles the stake between hands. “I heard your voice.”

 

“And thought it was a marvelous night to pick on Caroline.”

 

“I do not pick on you!”

 

“Yeah, you do. It’s kind of a thing for you, along with chasing dangerous artifacts and Petrova doppelgangers.”

 

“Regardless,” he responds with finality rolling his eyes. “Allow me to call a friend of mine to get rid of the body.”

 

“That’s not necessary,” Caroline snaps. His eyebrows shoot up in astonishment. “You wish to leave him for the police?”

 

“Why not?”

 

“Indeed.” He shrugs smiling as if he’s letting her have her way. “Then you should break the collarbone or fracture his pelvis. It’s a little tricky I can do it if you want. The way he is lying face up is good. It will make it look like a freak accident—.”

 

“And the blood will pool in his back and disguise the absence of bruising, I know,” she said. “I watch CSI reruns.”

 

“Yes but it’s important that he has left enough blood for this,” he says absentmindedly while observing Roger’s body. “What of your teeth marks? Any other signs of struggle?”

 

“I did not drink from him!” she protests.

 

“Relax, darling. I am not accusing you of anything.”

 

Klaus uses his fist and a sound like half-soaked breadsticks breaking comes out of Roger’s body . “I heard him following me,” she says over the blood pounding in her temples. “I led him here. All it took was some pressure to his neck. He doesn’t even have any vervain on him.” Klaus takes Roger’s hands and brings them to his face.

 

 “He barely smells of you at all,” he says placing Roger’s hands back down and stands up wiping his hands clean of dust and vampire hunter germs. “This one was easy, a rookie. He might have picked you because you look soft and fragile for a vampire.”

 

“Because I’m a blonde who wears short dresses?”

 

“Basically. This whole alley would have been painted in fine B positive 96 percent arterial saturation blood if he’d picked the other blonde vampire in short dresses in Mystic Falls. We’re in luck.”

 

Caroline’s mouth tastes of copper. “OK Klaus. I’m going home now. Thanks for all your help.”

 

She starts running wondering if Stefan will mind if she breaks into his house. A hand on her arm makes the world return to human speed. She swivels forcing Klaus to let go. The town square fountain, lit as it is on a sweet-tempered breezy summer night, is really the worst place to appear in out of thin air.

 

“Caroline, where are you going?”

 

“Home. Did I not say goodnight? Goodnight, Klaus.”

 

“Listen, Caroline,” he says smiling unpleasantly to her face. “You can take this as a quid pro—

 

“Oh.” His eyebrows shoot up again and it’s fine it’s really fine because Caroline can already tell by the strain in her jaw and cheek muscles that she’s gone dark and fangy anyway. One corner of his ridiculous rosebud lips curls. “Honey, why didn’t you tell me you were hungry?”

 

She has her breathing under control, not that it’s done her much good so far. “Out of my way, Klaus.”

 

“Yes, of course,” he says but she’s already past him running again. Stefan’s kitchen door is safe for now.

 

She follows the smell of pine black soil and wet animal—just until she makes it under the trees and can use her eyes. At five hundred feet two big field mice are scratching and scraping under a young fir and there’s a smoky white trail of heat circling the copse that belongs to a hare. A shallow-ish nest of voles is a leap away. She’s never had vole before so it is a perfect night of firsts.  Six small dead animals are piled by her lap when she’s swallowed the last mouthful and her fangs withdraw with only a little effort. She thinks she’s seen a skulking doglike red-heat shape awhile back with pointy ears. Perhaps it will be interested in bloodless corpses. And then there’s the humanlike red-heat shape the crossed arms over its chest watching her.

 

“You came onto him from behind,” Klaus says.

 

Are you still here?”

 

“He never had the chance to fight you off which is why he had no traces of you on him.”

 

Roger went into the alley after her, stake already gripped in his hand. She saw his back from her place in the shadows going deeper in, watched until the street light slipped off his silhouette and the dark took him in and it was as if it’d said, “Come, he’s all yours”.

 

“Does it make it better if you don’t drink from your kills?” Klaus comes out of the shadow of the trees and the August moon lights his face. In this blue-white light there’s no night vision required to see the condescending angling of his head and accompanying smile.

 

“Listen, I’ve never stalked anyone before,” she explains.

 

He holds out a hand, she takes it and he pulls her up and away from the corpse pile.

 

“Caroline Forbes: Vampire hunter hunter,” Klaus says laughing.

 

“Shut up.”

 

“Does Stefan know? Does Elena? Bonnie?” Still laughing.

 

“Shut up!” She squeezes his arm.

 

“It feels very right, doesn’t it?”

 

“For God’s sake, Klaus!” she shakes him angry bunching his shirt in her hands. Her dad would kill her if he found out and a terrifying moment passes before she remembers.

 

“I was so eager to get to his blood I pulled too hard on his neck,” she says the fight gone out of her. “Make a wish and pull. Snap!”

 

“Humans are made of porcelain when you’re one of us.”

 

“I broke him. I broke Roger Barlow.” An exhalation comes out like a giggle. “Like a Thanksgiving turkey.” Caroline starts laughing and doesn’t stop. Not even when Klaus covers her mouth with his, teeth clacking. Her fingernails on his back pierce through his shirt and she’s still shaking with it.  Klaus licks and nips hands roaming until she relaxes against him with a deep sigh tongue and lips responding. Every time he withdraws she chases the heat and moisture of his mouth until she grabs a fistful of curls to fix his head just so and slides her own tongue between his lips.

 

Her dress slides up easily under his palms and her legs leave the ground to circle around his waist. She grinds her pelvis against the seam of his crotch, his fingers on her ass slide under her panties to push with her. She feels his dick harden through cotton and zip. Sliding becomes easier and more urgent, she’s that wet.

 

She pushes his collar out of the way to reach past the stubble to the smooth skin of his neck, the curve of his collarbone trace it with her blunt teeth. Her fingers find a groove to the base of his spine from under his shirt that’s already began to perspire and smooth over it. Klaus backs her into a tree jarringly hard.

 

“Careful now. Don’t break the tree,” she giggles but he’s freed his hands. It only takes one rough pull and both bra and dress are down to her waist baring her breasts, momentarily before his palms bear down on them. His mouth closes over one nipple and then the other and Caroline sits back shivering, mind barely registering the grating bark of the tree, unable to move her hips. She rips opens his shirt softly scraping over his sides, and down to the thin slightly hairy center of his chest, his diaphragm rising and falling and the tension in his abdomen and unbuckles his belt rips off the button and tries to push his pants down. Pinned between his pelvis and the tree she only manages to reach his silky globes of his ass. Giving up she goes back to his shoulder, frustrated she bites down, tasting blood.  Sweeter than vole blood but with a tang in it like too many mint leaves steeped for tea its aroma turned bitter. She closes her lips around the wound and draws just a mouthful more before he pulls her by the hair.

 

“Did I say you could bite me?” His eyes have turned black and yellow. He’s angry.

 

“More,” she says and at last there’s enough room for her to reach inside his pants warm and humid from sweat and fluids both his and hers to grip his hard length clumsily and rub him. She watches as his breathing falters and his eyelids flicker over the black.

 

His nails rip through her panties and scratch her bottom, stinging, but finally pants and underwear make way for flesh to merge but instead he cups her cunt. He rubs her clit with the heel of his hand.

 

“Klaus, come on.”

 

His fingertips circle her entrance, her womb throbs in response wanting, but he only goes so far.

 

He lets go of her hair and she watches as his teeth grow and his jaw and snout elongate to accommodate them. His eyes are still two yellow rings immersed in black. Her own fangs respond to the threat and won’t withdraw; in her mind she’s already climbed the tree she’s trapped against.

 

“This is how it works, Caroline. You must ask the person you’re fucking, ‘Can I bite you?’—

 

“Yes.”

 

He grins flashing two rows of pointy white teeth.

 

—And then you wait for their response.”

 

Klaus’s fingers split her open, her fingers pushing against his to bring his cock inside slowly releasing one finger at a time until he’s seated fully in. He pounds her into the tree each thrust of his produces a moan from her his torso pins her like a vice in the end she doesn’t know what makes her come, hitting all the right spots or the reverberations from the force of his fucking. She explodes into a wreckage of light. The pain from his bite comes later while he’s still thrusting eyes clear once again rosebud mouth painted iron red.

 

Three more bites: one to the underside of her left breast, one over the kidney and one high to the inside of her thigh as he’s coming in her mouth is how long it takes to feel him shudder unreserved. He lays his head next to her eyes shut with his hair tickling her side, limp. She watches as his chest rises and falls rhythmically, continuously, forever if he will have any say in it.

 

“CSI reruns, is it?” he says in a conversational tone. “It took us fifty years to learn to disguise our corpses. We had burned down the white oak by then of course and we were still together. We had nothing to fear from humans.”

 

Caroline folds her legs under her and rises with effort lightheaded. Blood loss, she thinks, and healing.  Once she’s vertical she feels hungry – again – and this time one of the antique bronze doorknobs of the Salvatore household is going to get it.

 

Most of her clothes made it out intact except her panties which are now yellow cotton ribbons. She puts her bra on and her dress and remembers that forest sex comes with pine needles getting stuck in awkward places. Klaus is watching her from the ground, his eyes idly following her motions, but he rises to help her take the flora out of her hair. He’s gentle and he kisses her shoulder when he’s done.

 

“There’s a coyote close by. Do you feel like hunting?”

 

Caroline shakes her head. “No.”

 

“Come back to my place then.”

 

She shakes her head no again. She has to make sure her mom found the body and the ID. And she has to go tell someone who will rage at her and shake her and ground her – Bonnie. Klaus seizes her head forcing her to look at him.

 

“Don’t imagine that this is over between us,” he says through clenched teeth.

 

Caroline stares. _Call me when you’ve packed for Tokyo. I’ll synch my iPod with Japanese speaking tutorials and forget to pack any undies and you know I wonder if I can survive a bungee jump without a bungee cord. I want to learn how to die and I want to fuck you on the queen of England’s bed and drink freshly squeezed grape juice in Frascati. I want to always ask you for your blood in my throat._

 

She pulls out the pine needles that got stuck in his hair, reciprocating. His grip softens and she kisses him deeply taking her time letting go of her fear. She lets go steps back fixing her dress and ties the mess of her hair up in a bun.

 

“Call me.”

 

 

 


End file.
